Cover yourself – in glory?

One of my favourite albums of the last few years is God Help The Girl – the album (and much more) from Stuart Murdoch’s side project of the same name. God Help The Girl

I particularly like the re-working of the track Funny Little Frog which originally appeared on Belle & Sebastian‘s The Life Pursuit and here gets a funky face lift, turning it into a sort of soulful torch song.

I always find it interesting when an artist takes another bash at an old favourite of theirs – and I don’t mean a remix or an acoustic version – I mean a whole new take on a song. Same lyrics, same chords but with an entirely different feel to it.

Diana – Prefab Sprout

Version one appeared as an extra track on the double-pack 7″ single of When Love Breaks Down. About five years later, a much slower and more downbeat version turned up on the Protest Songs album.

This early live favourite from the floppy-fringed, Glasgow art-school pospters first saw the light of recorded day in February 1980 when a live version appeared on a flexi disc given away with a fanzine. A slightly more polished version turned up on the band’s debut album, the seminal You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever in 1982.

Orange Juice are thought by many to be synoymous with Edwyn Collins – and of course Edwyn was always at the forefront of what made Orange Juice great but it would be wrong to underestimate James Kirk’s contribution to the band: a contribution which included penning Felicity.

Many years after Orange Juice‘s demise, James Kirk embarked on a solo career, the highlight of which was the 2003 album You Can Make It If You Boogie. And the album included a reworking of Felicity – a less-frenetic, more thoughtful version, I think you’ll agree.

Pop trivia: when The Wedding Present recorded their own version of Felicity, David Gedge introduced it with the words “this is a William Shatner song” – a reference to the songwriter, James (not T) Kirk.

In 1990, Jonathan Richman recorded a whole album of Country songs under the title Jonathan Goes Country. Alongside some Country & Western classics, he reworked a number of his own songs, including You’re The One For Me, a semi-autobiographical song which had originally appeared on the 1983 album, Jonathan Sings.

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§ 28 Responses to Cover yourself – in glory?

Dammit! Great idea, and I have no time at all to listen before I disappear out of the country again. Could you by any chance leave the tunes in the Dropbox until after 9th September? And, yes, I know I owe you a couple of bottles of beer…

I once sent a copy of a film I made to Stuart Murdoch, because I thought he would like it. Listen to what he said on his blog…

“My school career was so boring! I was a nothing. I’m just watching a film someone sent me called ‘Persistence Of Vision’ by Claire Adas about an unusual young woman at a posh school for girls. I like her outfit and hair. I may try to copy her look, sadly trying to make up for the bore that was my mid and late teens.”

steen – you are so in with the the ‘slightly to the left of the out crowd’ and that’s a good thing in my scrapbook.
I’m going to do a Napoleon Dynamite style dance, in your honor just because I know you…
….can you feel the moves.. can you see the grin.
ACES.

Stuart Murdoch listened to my demo, I’m told. He found it either “winsome” or “whimsical” apparently, I forget which. Coming from him…

I love that reworking of Funny Little Frog – I’ve listened to God Help The Girl once, but for some reason haven’t bought it. I really don’t know why not, and must do something about it.

There’s a few examples of bands putting two versions of the same song on an album – my favourite example possibly being “Mistress” on the Red House Painters rollercoaster album (lo-fi distortion and bleak piano). “The Militant” by Lambchop on How I Quit Smoking. “Forever Young” on Planet Waves. The two versions of “Higher Than The Sun” on Screamadelica are perhaps too different to count.

and Pixies were notorious for surf re jigs of their songs – usually live.. much fun. But the weirdest was Frank Black Francis doing a whole lot of his Pixies tracks with parping trumpets and everything ‘planet of sound’ is a whole 14 minutes of wig out if I remember correctly.. If you are going to fuck with perfect 3 minute tunes… Fuck with your own 3 minute tunes….

I have a problem with the fact that the one example that springs immediately to mind is the absolute reverse, namely Whitesnake bowdlerising their legacy for the sake of the US market. Which is not an emaple which will speak to many people, and I am cuirrently typing this very slowly ‘cos I’m pissed. so will hope to resume discussion at some later date.

The Chills’ Secret Box collection has some interesting Peel session versions of their songs- especially Rain. Herbie Hancock famously reworked Watermelon Man on Headhunters, making it almost unrecognisable from the original. But (though I know you’re not really aiming at jazz artists here) probably the artist who most often and radically reworked his own material for my tastes would be Miles Davis, especially in sixties live versions of his late fifties hits. One 1969 performance (Juan-les-pins, Antibes) of Milestones by his pre-rock band is (almost) a piss-take of the orginal, the theme is deliberately left unfinished. It’s still brilliant.

I had a lovely mellow listen this afternoon .. much needed, had to go back to work this morning.

as for spam – I get useful rubbish that comes from what looks like my own e-mail address- weirdly I know myself enough to know that I don’t want a free bet or v*****.. but this one I set up does get lots of fee music, so I cope.

‘Ageing Young Rebel perfect for RR this week’ I clicked recommend – but I’ve been 404ed from my first post an hour in on Friday morning to late last night.. even my jokes are being used hours after I’ve posted them here.

It’s not a funny weekend for noms – loads of DJ Format missed cos I couldn’t post.. and a huge Saturday night post lost (the worst thing was it didn’t save in my documents either cos that crashed – I know it’s only daddypig that reads them – but I feel I’m letting him down!)

I read them too.. probably won’t manage your playlist this week though, too much going on…. I’m just hanging on for a week’s holiday starting Thursday.. stupid time on the current project with everybody freaking out, I need a break.
Fanfare Ciocarlia at the open air last night improved my mood immensely (it was pissing down outside but with all that brass, hot air and uncoordinated dancing Germans, it was steaming inside the tent)

once followed a travelling gypsy brass ensemble for two hours around a festival, a mass of uncoordinated dancing and a showing of the film ‘Black Cat /White Cat’ at the end of it (in the woods at midnight) a more grin inducing time is difficult to imagine.

Jazz reworkings work for me – I’m just interested in any emaples (!) of an artist revisiting a composition with a fresh eye/ear. It is probably more of a jazz concept than a rock/pop one so perhaps I am more interested in the latter but … all ideas are welcome.

It’s not really what I’m looking for – acoustic versions, sessions and live gigs can all throw up interesting interpretations but what I’m really after are conscious decisions to rework an exisiting song, taken into the studio and put out there for the world to hear.

Usually a sign of a band coming to the end of the road. “Boy’s we can’t improve on the originals so why don’t we try to improve the originals”.

My point is that this isn’t the case in any of the four songs that I posted.

Both versions of the Prefab Sprout song were recorded when the band were at their recording prime.

Orange Juice may long have been a thing of the past when James Kirk re-recorded Felicity but this is hardly an example of someone lacking ideas. More a case of a songwriter given the opportunity to show how he envisaged the song. Personally, I prefer the original but that’s neither here nor there.

I’m not quite sure where you’re going with the statement that Jonathan is ‘unlikely to spilt up with himself’ – the song I posted seems to me to be a perfect example of an artist revisiting a song and giving it a different twist.

As for Belle & Sebastian, I agree that the last albums haven’t reached the heights of their predecessors. It’s all subjective anyway but God Help The Girl is (imho) Stuart Murdoch’s best work for years and the version of Funny Little Frog is just one of many brilliant tracks on the album.

I love Thin Lizzy’s slow version of Don’t Believe A Word, much more than I do the well-known faster version. I think it’s wonderfully melancholic as a slow blues number, which (as Phil Lynott explained on Lizzy Life-Live) was the original arrangement.

I’ll have a think about this one: it certainly is a thinker of a thread.